John Maynard Keynes, then a rising young economist, participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as chief representative of the British Treasury and advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He resigned after desperately trying and failing to reduce the huge demands for reparations being made on Germany. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is Keynes' brilliant and prophetic analysis of the effects that the peace treaty would have both on Germany and, even more fatefully, the world.
An archive-based study examining how the four Allies - Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union - prepared for and conducted their occupation of Germany after its defeat in 1945. Uses the case of public health to shed light on the complexities of the immediate post-war period.
A military historian’s “thought-provoking” examination of Germany’s role in the outbreak of the First World War (Soldier Magazine). The conflagration that consumed Europe in August 1914 had been a long time in coming—and yet it need never have happened at all. For though all the European powers were prepared to accept a war as a resolution to the tensions which were fermenting across the Continent, only one nation wanted war to come: Imperial Germany. Of all the countries caught up in the tangle of alliances, promises, and pledges of support during the crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Germany alone possessed the opportunity and the power to determine that a war in eastern Europe would become the Great War, which swept across the Continent and nearly destroyed a thousand years of European civilization. For nearly nine decades it has been argued that the responsibility for the First World War was a shared one, spread among all the Great Powers. Now, in The Burden of Guilt, historian Daniel Allen Butler substantively challenges that point of view, establishing that the Treaty of Versailles was actually a correct and fair judgment: Germany did indeed bear the true responsibility for the Great War. Working from government archives and records, as well as personal papers and memoirs of the men who made the decisions that carried Europe to war, Butler interweaves the events of summer 1914 with portraits of the monarchs, diplomats, prime ministers, and other national leaders involved in the crisis. He explores the national policies and goals these men were pursuing, and shows conclusively how on three distinct occasions the Imperial German government was presented with opportunities to contain the spreading crisis—opportunities unlike those of any other nation involved—yet each time, the German government consciously and deliberately chose the path which virtually assured that the Continent would go up in flames. The Burden of Guilt is a work destined to become an essential part of the library of the First World War, vital to understanding not only the “how” but also the “why” behind the pivotal event of modern world history.
Since World War II, Germany has confronted its own history to earn acceptance in the family of nations. Lily Gardner Feldman draws on the literature of religion, philosophy, social psychology, law and political science, and history to understand Germany's foreign policy with its moral and pragmatic motivations and to develop the concept of international reconciliation. Germany's Foreign Policy of Reconciliation traces Germany's path from enmity to amity by focusing on the behavior of individual leaders, governments, and non-governmental actors. The book demonstrates that, at least in the cases of France, Israel, Poland, and Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, Germany has gone far beyond banishing war with its former enemies; it has institutionalized active friendship. The German experience is now a model of its own, offering lessons for other cases of international reconciliation. Gardner Feldman concludes with an initial application of German reconciliation insights to the other principal post-World War II pariah, as Japan expands its relations with China and South Korea.
In 1983, more than one million Germans joined together to protest NATO’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe. International media overflowed with images of marches, rallies, and human chains as protesters blockaded depots and agitated for disarmament. Though they failed to halt the deployment, the episode was a decisive one for German society, revealing deep divisions in the nation’s political culture while continuing to mobilize activists. This volume provides a comprehensive reference work on the “Euromissiles” crisis as experienced by its various protagonists, analyzing NATO’s diplomatic and military maneuvering and tracing the political, cultural, and moral discourses that surrounded the missiles’ deployment in East and West Germany.
This book examines external perceptions of the Franco-German relationship, both from a historical perspective and as a driving force for regional integration. By providing various country and regional studies, it analyses the various types of perception and self-perception in several regions around the globe. Here, Franco-German cooperation serves as a mirror in which third-party countries view their own situation, today and in the future. The contributions address the questions of if and how the Franco-German reconciliation and cooperation is perceived as a role model for other regions, especially for the reconciliation of other inter-state and international conflicts. A concluding chapter highlights the divergences and convergences between the respective conflicts, and proposes recommendations for actors involved in diplomacy and international relations. The book is intended to provide scientific support for the implementation of the Franco-German Aachen Treaty of January 2019. It will appeal to scholars in political science and cultural studies, and to anyone interested in learning more about the Franco-German relationship and on external perspectives on it.
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) lies at the intersection of early modern and modern times. Frequently portrayed as the concluding chapter of the Reformation, it also points to the future by precipitating fundamental changes in the military, legal, political, religious, economic, and cultural arenas that came to mark a new, the modern era. Prompted by the 400th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, the contributors reconsider the event itself and contextualize it within the broader history of the Reformation, military conflicts, peace initiatives, and negotiations of war.
"With a combination of personal interviews including several with leading Nazis and with Himmler's daughter, Gudrun Burwitz, and the use of previously unseen documents, Allen presents the whole Nazi high command in a fresh light, demonstrating how Hitler was often manipulated and sometimes sidelined. But perhaps of equal interest is the inside story of secret operations conducted by the Political Warfare Executive, empowered by Churchill to fight a war with weapons of destabilisation and misinformation in support of the oven military campaigns. Allen portrays Himmler's ever more desperate efforts to secretly negotiate his political survival with the Allies, as Hitler's war machine collapses. This book has one more revelation to make, as Allen rewrites history with his account of the true circumstances of Himmler's dramatic death."--BOOK JACKET.
